The Red Umbrella Fund is the first global fund guided by and for sex workers. We believe that change will only be achieved through strong, collaborative movements of sex workers advocating for their rights, with the support of their allies. Sex workers themselves are the best positioned to know what is needed for them, and best placed to do something about it. The Red Umbrella Fund exists to mobilise resources to help strengthen and sustain the movement in achieving human rights for sex workers.

“It’s helpful having sex workers making funding decisions because we understand which projects or groups will really be effective towards positive change. Bottom line, it’s our bodies, our lives, and we should be at the forefront of all decisions affecting us” (member of the Red Umbrella Fund’s Programme Advisory Committee)

Since its creation in 2012, the Fund has supported the work of 46 sex worker-led groups in 41 different countries. They were selected by the sex worker-led Programme Advisory Committee (PAC) out of almost 1600 applications during two rounds of applications (2012 and 2013).

Highlights

The Red Umbrella Fund grantee Organización de Trabajadoras del Sexo (OTS) in El Salvador mapped the situation of sex workers and documented the human rights violations they experience. This strategy has resulted in an effective model for legal empowerment and rights advocacy. OTS implemented a national mapping of the situation of sex workers through self-led... Read more »

Each year on 17 December, the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, sex worker rights activists and their allies come together to remember the colleagues they have lost and bring attention to the need to end the stigma, discrimination and violence against sex workers. It is time for more funders to speak out... Read more »

Thuli Khoza, Coordinator of Sisonke Durban and member of the Red Umbrella Fund’s peer review panel in 2014, speaks to Zoe Bakker about the daily work involved with being a regional branch of South Africa’s sex worker movement. Specifically, she shares important insights in the unique context of the Durban and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) area and... Read more »

The event brings together sex worker activists, UNFPA and academics to discuss sexual reproductive health of sex workers, legal and policy reform, sex work activism, to name a few. It is public and there will be simultaneous translation for all participants.

For more information and detailed programme, please contact: Kemal Ördek: kemal.ordek@kirmizisemsiye.org ... See MoreSee Less